Unwelcome history will be served up with dinner
West End’s Roedde House to host meal marking date of 1887 anti-Chinese riot
A six-course dinner being served tonight at a historic house in the West End commemorates a dark day in Vancouver’s history: the anti-Chinese riot of 1887.
On the menu are contemporary versions of the kinds of foods that might have been eaten 130 years ago by Anglo-Scottish, German and Chinese settlers and labourers.
As one of the main courses, pie made from local pigeons might have been cooked with Five Spice Powder, a staple in Chinese cooking. A possible dessert might have been an apple tart that later became a signature item for many years at the Hong Kong Café, an institution in Chinatown.
“They were famous for their apple tarts, which is not a traditional Chinese desert at all,” said artist Henry Tsang, who will host the evening.
“Obviously, it was an adaptation of something European.”
In researching the kinds of foods eaten at the time, Tsang went to the Vancouver City Archives, where he found such historic menus as a Hotel Vancouver menu from 1888. He challenged local chefs Wesley Young and Jacob DeaconEvans to create a menu based on the kinds of foods that would have been eaten in a wild west town like Vancouver in the late 19th century.
The Unwelcome Dinner takes place in Roedde House, a Queen Anne revival-style house built in 1893 for Gustav Roedde, at 1415 Barclay St.
The riot took place on Thursday, Feb. 24, 1887. After months of anti-Chinese meetings, someone was seen carrying a placard reading “The Chinese have came (sic) Mass meeting in the City Hall to-night.” At the packed meeting, a man called out for all “those in favour of turning out the Chinese tonight.”
The crowd responded immediately and headed through the snow to the camp where Chinese labourers lived at Coal Harbour.
“There the 300 to 400 members of the mob kicked some Chinese and ordered all of them to leave,” according to historian Patricia E. Roy’s account of the riot. “As the Chinese prepared to go, the mob began demolishing the camp, pulling down shanties, smashing outfits and throwing bedding and provisions in the fire.”
Tyler Russell, curator and executive director at Centre A, came up with the idea of the dinner. He said the 1887 riot is probably more significant than the better known 1907 Anti-Oriental Riots that targeted both Chinese-Canadians and Japanese-Canadians.
In 1887, of about 1,000 people in Vancouver, 300 or more were of Chinese descent along with a significant Japanese population. But the riot decimated the Chinese community and sent a message about the kind of city Vancouver would become.
“Had that white supremacy moment not happened, had race not been a factor, the way the West End would come into being, the way Vancouver itself would have come into being over time, would have been completely different,” he said. “How white supremacy functioned to lay the groundwork for how the culture of this city evolved is important to consider.”
The Unwelcome Dinner is sold out.
Organizers are charging the 25 participants (and a waiting list of 11) $60 to cover the cost of the meal. The dinner starts at 7 p.m.
Speakers during the dinner are Hayne Wai, one of the co-founders of the Chinese Historical Society of B.C., who will talk about the organized resistance to Chinese immigration; Kevin Huang, executive director of the Hua Foundation, will talk about how younger Chinese-Canadians perceive history and cultural traditions; and Stephanie Yuen, food critic, talks about how Chinese cuisine has developed and changed.